What it Means to Love
by Evangeline Pearl
Summary: Even Morino Ibiki has times he cannot deal with the world at large. This is one of them. Little does anyone know of his safe haven, his home, the love that continues to save him.


Morino Ibiki was a simple man.

He was a weapon for his village first and foremost, a blade forged and weathered by pain and desperation. He had been broken down and dulled and made near unsalvageable many, many times. Still, he always _got back up_. His ability to persevere and be made sharp again was what made him _unbreakable_.

He hid his scars for the benefit of the more squeamish, but they were marks of honor. Each indicated another moment, another minute that he proved to himself that he was _stronger_ than anything this world could throw at him. Another day, another hour, that he protected that which stood behind him. He was still a soldier and he fought for those that remained behind rather than those ahead of him.

Then, he was human second. His resilience was something to be made note of, and his mental fortitude was formidable. He was a fairly level-headed sort of man, and he was not particularly violent even in his anger. He certainly had a twisted sense of humor, but he could still find the world around him beautiful, and there was still love in his heart.

And few were aware of his third status. His lover was a well-kept secret, and most did not even know she existed. With the stress of his past view days, that which he could not relieve elsewhere, he knew he needed her special brand of skill.

She did not even have to see the look in his eye to guide him in through the door and shut it behind him. Without a word, she led him through the house to the rear courtyard and the porch that wrapped that half of her family's house. She left him there to collect a tray with tea from the kitchen and soon returned to kneel in seiza behind him.

Rising up on her knees, she draped herself over his back and pulled at the knot in his bandana edition hitai-ate. In her house, her home, he was not a shinobi or a soldier or an interrogator. He was simply _human_ , and _hers_.

She ran her hands over the scars that mapped his skull, rhythmically counting and cataloguing each with her fingertips. Sometimes, when inclined, he would whisper the story to one of his many, many scars in her ear as he held her, the vibration of his voice echoing back at him from the cavity in her chest that he belonged. Now though, he did not react, not that she was expecting him to.

She did not dwell on it and instead lowered her arms to drape over his shoulders and down his chest as she curled her body against his back. She traced the flexing cord of muscles in his arms until her fingers fell into the space between his own.

He was the strongest person she knew, stronger than a good lot of them combined. There was no way she could ever understand everything about him and what his job forced him to endure. They're lives were so many worlds apart. But there was one thing she was sure of, and that was no one could survive his life the way he had. For being so strong, he could not even bring himself to _look_ at her, to acknowledge her presence, and that made her worry.

It terrified her. Not for anyone or anything else but he himself. He was strong but he had been broken and they both knew he was not infallible.

She rubbed her thumb along a winding scar on the back of his palm, made of burning rope and chakra wire, and drew her hands away. Falling back on her heels, she laid her palms on his shoulders and tugged. She was more than relieved when he fell back into her, _trusting_ her explicitly where he rarely gave his trust.

She could have cried with how delighted she was that he did not resist. This was one of his better nights (for coping with bad things anyway), she decided and tilted her face up to look at the moon. It hung low, a little off center, and a bright silver blue in the sky.

Wrapping her arms as best she could around his torso, she rested her head on his shoulder, the side of her face against his, and hummed softly under her breath.

They were a strange coupling, and their dynamic almost a language all in its own. She, the woman that could not speak, and he, the man that kept secrets behind sealed lips. But in that, their every touch, every gesture, they spoke more to each other than anything in this world could imagine.

He turned his face slightly to the side and shifted to rest his scarred head back against her chest and shoulder, and all the worry drained right out of her. He would be fine. Perhaps not right away, and perhaps things were not all well, but he would move past whatever weighed on him.

Often, she wished she could do more than this for him, but even this was enough. Somedays he just needed to be reminded that she was _there_. That even if she could not understand, she would always stay. She would hold him through the times he felt like screaming, and she would be there at his side during the nightmares.

He turned, suddenly, and his large hands folded over her own, spreading her arms wide and pressing her back and down against the wood paneled floor. She hurriedly shifted her feet out from under her and on either side of him, and looked up at his face. Hovering over her, with the blue moon behind him, she did not even notice the tears that filled her eyes.

She slumped against the floor, boneless, and let him watch her with predatory curiosity. Then the corner of his mouth twisted and the intensity in his eyes shifted. Not gone, but different.

He brought a hand to her face and brushed it over her eyelid, collecting and wiping away the wetness there. Sliding forward, he pushed her legs wider apart and bent in half to press his forehead against the floor beside her head.

Flexing her wrists, she realized he would not let her budge much more than that so settled in to wait. Laying back fully, she tilted her head towards his and let that contact ground her as she stared into the star spaces between the stars above her.

 _I love you_.

She thought it again, wishing she could fill him with it. He was _it_ for her. She may never marry him or carry his last name, and he may not come home one day, but she would carry his first child into the world and he filled her heart.

 _You are everything to me. You are mine. And I am yours. And I love you._

The bulk and size of his body dwarfed her own by nearly double, but the position was oddly comfortable despite it all.

He let her hands go, but she did not move them, and brought his own up to either side of her face as he rose up once more. His fingers curled under the black expanse of her hair and curved along the line of her jaw into the nape of her neck. He cradled her skull, and she knew he could snap her neck before she could even perceive a twitch of his hands, but she was not scared of him and he did nothing else.

Staring at her without seeing her, he rode out the last of his _fear-horror-whyus-whynow-no-not again_ and slid back so he could lay fully against her.

 _I love you._

She welcomed the familiar sensation of his weight pinning her down, and she slowly brought her hands down to stroke his back. The tightness in his jaw slowly eased against her chest, and she smiled at nothingness.

 _I love you. I love you. I love you._

She could not stop her mental mantra if she tried. Something had rattled him, something bad, something she could not help him with, something he could not tell her about, but he was here. He was in her arms, he was home, and that was good enough for her.

She eased the subconscious, knuckle-whitening grip she had on his clothes and crept her hands up to his shoulders. Shifting them higher, she settled them against the cusp between neck and skull and closed her eyes.

Painting her worries in the gaps between the stars in her mental eye, she sent up her concern for his wellbeing and his health, for her to endure his absence when it was called for, for their village and its continued stability, for the shinobi that protected them. She painted everything in the black expanse and felt the weight lift from her soul.

He encased her in his arms then and rolled, laying her against the lines of his chest, and held her to him like a dying man clinging to a lifeline. Then he mouthed her name against her hair, and she sank right into the warmth he provided. He echoed it again and laid her head against his shoulders, humming until the vibration transferred him his chest to hers, making her tremble from the depths of her core.

She was drifting, floating on his body head, and falling over the slope and into sleep when she felt it.

 _I love you too_.

It was little more than a pet of her hair, and a kiss to her temple, but it filled her with a warmth nothing else could hope to match. The wind chime she had installed on the porch days previous swayed with a breeze and broke the silence, laughing in the slow shift from night to day.

He'd heard, he knew, he understood, and he returned. That was all that mattered. She did not need to know what was wrong, did not need to have him unload all his secrets on her. All she needed was for him to keep coming back home to her, for him to fold her up and hold her like this. All she wanted was to wake up to his smile and to live in the laughter of his heart.


End file.
